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Justification, The Reformers, and Rome


Where do we, as Anglicans, stand in regard to Rome? Given the conflict in the Anglican Communion and the apostasy of the Episcopal Church, is Rome a safe haven? Does she stand firm against the errors of modernity? Are the errors of Anglicanism so great, and those of Rome so minor, as to warrant a "return" to Rome?

In this essay I will review some of Anglicanism's original differences with Rome and briefly assess their significance. Above all, I wish to focus on the great Reformation doctrine of justification by faith. Differences on that doctrine led to the Anglican break with Rome, and further, the Reformers were convinced that this doctrine was critical for our salvation.(1) Nothing is more serious, more indispensable, more essential, than to know how and why we are saved. Therefore, let us consider justification and certain allied doctrines.

For the Roman position on justification, I have studied the Catechism of the Catholic Church published in 1992 by the authority of John Paul II. It was written under the direction of then Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. This new Catechism is the first officially authorized catechism of the Roman Church since the 1566 Catechism that enshrined the doctrines of Trent. As described in its opening sections, the 1992 Catechism is a "sure norm for teaching the faith and thus a valid and legitimate instrument for elesial community." It "is conceived as an organic presentation of the Catholic faith in its entirety."(2) In other words, the Catechism is a complete and sufficient norm for the Catholic faithful. For Anglican teaching, I have relied most heavily on Scripture, Hooker, the Articles of Religion, the Homily on Salvation, and the texts by W. H. Griffth Thomas and E. H. Browne.(3) Now, where do we begin our doctrine of justification?

Let us begin with the true God. The one and only living God is a consuming fire. At the sight of his face heaven and earth flee away.(4) He is just. He is righteous. He is pure. He brooks no rivals, He allows no sin, He aepts no impurity. Before him, we are dust and ashes, our good deeds filthy rags, our churches whitewashed tombs, our nation shaken by the "ax that is already at the root of the trees."(5) Over against this holy God, all have sinned, all lost, all doomed, all driven back with nowhere to stand.(6) Everywhere, all around us, the "wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all godlessness and wickedness ... for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God."(7) That is our true condition.

Most people do not believe this. They don't see God as a threat. They think God is a sugar daddy, purveying cheap grace to any and all. They haven't seriously considered the prospect that may lie ahead, that it "is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.(8) They think real threats lie elsewhere. They worry about their relationships, their income, their health. They are preoupied with the liberal bias of the media, with abortion on demand, with sexual permissiveness, with terrorism, with right wing war mongers, corporate globalism, the environment, a thousand things except the one thing above all: How can we stand before a holy, righteous God who consumes all unrighteousness? And if we cannot stand, what will happen to us? That is the present danger, and God has made a way, justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

Justification by grace through faith is the great good news of the Protestant Reformation. In one stroke the Reformers did away with the corrupt medieval system of trading in grace the indulgences, casuistry, and merits, the calculating and sweating before a holy God who demands perfect righteousness. In its place came the great assurance that God by the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ has clothed us with Christ's righteousness through the forgiveness of our sins received in faith. This means that the true God is not the imagined god of our guilt, but rather, the Father of Jesus Christ. When this God considers us, He imputes Christ's righteousness to us. That is, He reckons and judges us as righteous, not with our own righteousness, but with the righteousness of Christ. Through Christ, we are ever pleasing in his sight. No act, prayer, sacrifice, or good deed on our part can add to this perfect gift. This gift is a blessing, a comfort, a hope, the only hope of salvation before a holy God. For this reason, Article XI of the Articles of Religion proclaims that justification is a "most wholesome Doctrine, and very full of comfort ... "

How is this great gift received? The righteousness of Christ is received in faith where faith itself is given by God's grace. First and foremost, faith means trust. It means believing and aepting that God truly considers us righteous with the righteousness of Christ. It means holding fast to the promise that the "righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known to us, ... This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe."(9)

This blessing does not mean that good works are irrelevant. Those who believe in God's justifying love will express their thankfulness in works of righteousness. Faith as trust will result in the obedience of good works. These good works are our sanctification. Good works, however, cannot save, nor do they lessen the need for justification.(10) They fall beneath the severity of God's judgment. Nevertheless, as described in Article XII, they are pleasing to God.

Justification and sanctification are both works of grace, but they differ. Justification is once and final, sanctification is daily, a daily effort to die to sin and rise to newness of life. Justification is imputed, sanctification is infused. Justification is external, attributed to us, sanctification is internal, the transformation of our nature.(11) Here is Hooker,

Thus we participate Christ partly by imputation, as when those things which he did and suffered for us are imputed unto us for righteousness; partly by habitual and real infusion, as when grace is inwardly bestowed while we are on earth, and afterwards more fully both our souls and bodies made like unto his in glory.(12)
This great hope in Christ's righteousness can be distorted. One can, for example, believe that God is a sweet old fellow who expects so little of us. This perspective is congruent with the paganism of our culture and found throughout the liberal churches. Another way to diminish God's holiness and the horror of sin is to believe that we, by our own works aided by grace, can be righteous before God. This is the Roman position. In regard to justification, the Roman Catechism makes the following statements,
Justification is not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man.

Justification detaches man from sin which contradicts the love of God, and purifies his heart of sin. Justification follows upon God's merciful initiative of offering forgiveness.

Justification includes the remission of sins, sanctification, and the renewal of the inner man.(13)
Anglicanism and Rome agree that justification requires the grace of God given in Jesus Christ. They differ in that Anglicanism believes that God imputes Christ's righteousness to us as our justification, while Rome holds that God infuses righteousness into us so that our righteousness, though enabled by grace, is the righteousness of our good works rather than Christ's imputed righteousness. Or, to put it another way, for the Anglican Reformers, justification is a once and for all act effected by Jesus Christ and received in faith. For Rome, justification is the process of achieving holiness given in the life long effort to daily conquer sin. Or, for Anglicanism, one can be both justified and a sinner since the righteousness of justification is that of Christ and imputed to us while our unrighteousness is our own. For Rome, however, one cannot be both justified and a sinner since the only righteousness we possess is our own which cannot coexist with our unrighteousness. A number of critical consequences follow from these profound differences.

For both Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism, faith is a response to God's grace. For Rome, however, faith is not, in the first instance, trust in God's promise of imputed righteousness. Rather, faith is belief in the truth of God's words followed by obedience. "By faith man completely submits his intellect and his will to God. ... Sacred Scripture calls this ... 'the obedience of faith.'"(14) Since faith includes obedience to God's commands, both belief in God's revelation and obedience to his commands are necessary for salvation. This implies that a certain degree of achieved righteousness is necessary to be saved. In the context of a discussion of indulgences, purgatory, and hell, the Catechism affirms that a "conversion which proceeds from a fervent charity can attain the complete purification of the sinner in such a way that no punishment would remain."(15) In other words, sufficiently holy souls might avoid hell as well as the fires of purgatory. It was this doctrine, leading to an insidious uncertainty as regards his own righteousness, that plunged Luther into the hell of spiritual despair. He could never be sure he was sufficiently pure.

Since good works contribute decisively to salvation, they have eternal value, and if shared, can contribute to the salvation of others. This leads to the doctrine of a treasury of merit, a reservoir of good deeds done by Christ, the Virgin, and holy souls. These merits are dispensed by the Roman Church as indulgences and can shorten the suffering of souls in purgatory.(16) This is Roman doctrine and clearly taught in the Catechism.

Since faith is assent to saving truths followed by obedience, it follows that the soul must be obeying the right moral and doctrinal norms for this obedience to save. To that end, the Roman Church believes she possesses the pure doctrinal and moral code that must be obeyed by the faithful. This righteousness on her part leads at once to the concept of infallibility. Just as Rome believes the soul can reach a certain degree of "perfection," she also believes she possesses a degree of perfect, infallible truth. Here is the Roman doctrine.
The Roman Pontiff, head of the college of bishops, enjoys this infallibility in virtue of his office, when, as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful who confirms his brethren in the faith he proclaims by a definitive act a doctrine pertaining to faith and morals.(17)
The infallible pronouncements of the Roman Pontiff add to the tradition, that living body of Truth preserved in the Roman Church alongside Scripture. For Rome, Scripture and tradition have equal authority, and Rome uniquely preserves the living stream of the tradition as well as the correct interpretation of Scripture.(18) This doctrine has affinities with the liberal doctrine that the Church can create new truth, a doctrine relentlessly promoted by the former Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church.(19) This liberal claim is not an expression of modernity, but rather, an ancient penchant to locate truth in ourselves, in our own wisdom and insight. It is the promise of the serpent, that we can "become like God, knowing good and evil."(20) Against this endemic human inclination, Article XIX of the Articles of Religion states, "As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch, have erred, so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of Ceremonies, but also in matters of Faith."

Further, according to Rome, salvation requires progress in good works and this progress is inhibited by sin. Some sins are fatal, they lead to hell, while other sins do not condemn to hell. The former are called mortal sins, the latter venial. Mortal sin must concern a grave matter and it must be committed with full knowledge and deliberate intent.(21) Mortal sin without repentance results in "exclusion from Christ's Kingdom and the eternal death of hell, ... "(22) Venial sins, if severe enough to exclude from immediate entrance into heaven, can be expiated in the sufferings of purgatory. Given this belief, anyone serious about leading a holy life before the all consuming judgment of God will never be sure they have escaped the insidious taint of venial or mortal sins.

Anglicanism was a reform movement within the wider stream of Christian faith and practice. Anglicans claimed that the teachings of Rome had departed from Scripture and the faith and practice of the first few centuries. Today, given the chaos in liberal Protestantism, there is the temptation to return to Rome. It must be said, however, that the substantive theological differences that divided the church in the sixteenth century still stand. Efforts to resolve those differences have failed. Lutherans and Roman Catholics have been in dialogue since 1964, meeting over fifty times. In 1999 a document on justification was produced. The Vatican response can be found on their web site.(23) In the view of Rome, one cannot be both righteous and a sinner because they do not believe in imputed righteousness. The rancor and bitterness on both sides of the sixteenth century debate has abated, but the issues still stand, and from the perspective of Rome, so do her anathemas.(24)

I am hesitant to be critical of Rome. After the rampart heresies of the liberal Protestant churches, one cannot help but admire Rome in her steadfast refusal to bow before certain idols of modernity. Further, in the sections on the Church, I found her teaching most irenic, holding to her own supremacy yet not condemning of others.(25) On the other hand, so much is at stake. According to the Anglican Reformers, this Roman teaching does not do justice to Scripture, to the holiness of God, the depth of human sin, the fallibility of our understanding of Christian truth, the power of Christ's atonement, and the need for peace with God in regard to our salvation. In the end, it leaves us before a holy God dependent on our own righteousness. I would not want to stand there. I cannot be in a church that would have me stand there. No one can stand there. No one, none, except Christ and those clothed in his righteousness received in faith, can stand.


I cannot imagine having to decide if certain of my sins are mortal, if the venial ones will send me to the torments of purgatory, if the church is always right, if indulgences are necessary, if my confessions are truly adequate, my prayers sufficient, and my good works acceptable. I want to know that I am safe with God, safe with the wholesome, saving righteousness of Christ. I want to plead nothing but his blood, no hope but his word of promise, no worry but his peace, no guilt but his shame, no darkness but his light.(26) Somewhere, someday, I will stand before God. On that day, heaven and earth may flee away, but I will stand serene, for at my side will be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. I cannot thank him enough. We cannot praise him enough. To him be the honor and the glory and the power forever and forever. Amen.
 

Endnotes

1. For a succinct list of why the Anglican Reformers broke with Rome, see Browne, An Exposition of the Thirty Nine Articles, 467 8. By and large, communion in one kind, for example, these differences still hold.
2. Part 3 of the opening section, and in the main body of the text, paragraph 18.
3. Browne, Edward Harold. An Exposition of the Thirty Nine Articles. London: Longmans, Green & Company, 1887. Thomas, Griffith W.H. Principles of Theology. London: Church Book Room Press, 1951.
4. Heb. 12:29, Rev. 20:11.
5. Job 42:6, Isa. 64:6, Mt. 23:27, Mt. 3:10.
6. Rev. 6:17.
7. Rom. 1:18, 3:23.
8. Heb. 10:31.
9. Rom. 3:21 22.
10. "... although we have faith, hope, charity, repentance, dread, and fear of GOD within us, and do never so many works thereunto: yet we must renounce the merit of all our said virtues, of faith, hope, charity, and all other virtues and good deeds, which we either have done, shall do, or can do, as things that be far too weak and insufficient, and imperfect, to deserve remission of our sins, and our justification, and therefore we must trust only in GODS mercy, and that sacrifice which our high Priest and Savior Christ Jesus the son of GOD once offered for us upon the Crosse, ... " (Homily on the Salvation of Mankind) You will not find a statement such as this in the Roman Catechism.
11. Griffith Thomas gives a clear, concise summary of the differences between justification and sanctification. Thomas, Principles of Theology, pp. 186 7.
12. Richard Hooker, Laws, V,lvi,11.
13. Catechism, paragraphs 1989, 1990, and 2019.
14. Catechism, paragraph 143. See the entire discussion on the first article of the Creed, "I believe," paragraphs 144 165.
15. Catechism, paragraph 4117.
16. See the section on Indulgences, paragraphs 1471 and following.
17. Catechism, paragraph 891.
18. Catechism, paragraphs 80 83.
19. See my essay entitled "Mystical Paganism an Analysis of the Presiding Bishop's Public Statements" in the theology section of my web page.
20. Gen. 3:5.
21. Catechism, paragraph 1857.
22. Catechism, paragraph 1861.
23. http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_01081998_off answer catholic_en.html. 24. "So, for all these reasons, it remains difficult to see how, in the current state of the presentation, given in the Joint Declaration, we can say that this doctrine on simul iustus et pecator is not touched by the anathemas of the Tridentine decree on original sin and justification." (See the previous endnote for the reference.)
25. The Catechism, paragraphs 836 38. This section reminds me of the irenic temper found in Hooker's sermon "A Learned Discourse of Justification, Works, and How the Foundation of Faith is Overthrown." In my view, Anglicanism has been rather restrained in its approach to Rome.
26. The greatest thing that happened to me in seminary was that the Rt. Rev. FitzSimons Allison, then professor of church history, taught me the great, saving doctrine of justification by grace through faith. It revolutionized my relation to God. I had spent my childhood in a fundamentalist church, four years of required chapel at Sewanee, and three years in the renewal movement in Florida, and as far as I know, never heard this saving doctrine.

The Rev. Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D.
2007

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